2008-02-11

A tool's tool

My laptop is ill indeed. On a fun note, I did look at the hard drive, and it is much better secured than in my tablet PC. I was sort of hoping they would be having the same problem. Consequently, I am stranded in the computer labs on campus using our HP workstations. They're not that bad, but it is inconvenient not having access to my regular environment, my regular tools. For instance, I enjoy emacs a good deal, but they don't have it installed here in the lab. I can compile it, but after trying a little and running through a number of dependencies, I think it might be high time to learn vi. Vi, a tool's tool. A tool for tools. That's my little jab at it.

I just went through vimtutor (we have vim 7.0 installed) and it wasn't as bad as I expected. Its modal nature definitely feels different conceptually, but so did emacs when I started learning that. At least with "the Single Unix Specification", I can expect vi to be installed on most PCs. I'm not sure what the value is of learning so many different tools. I enjoy a well-rounded experience, but when tools are to a large degree substitutes for one another, perhaps depth in one is sufficient.